Scene Six

Summary

Around 2 a.m., Blanche and Mitch
return to the Kowalski flat after their date. The large plastic
statuette that Mitch carries suggests their date took place at an
amusement park. Blanche appears completely wiped out. Mitch is more
awake but clearly melancholy. He apologizes for not giving her much
entertainment during their evening, but Blanche says it was her
fault that she simply couldn’t manage to enjoy herself. She reveals
that she will be leaving the flat soon. When Mitch asks if he may
kiss her goodnight, she tells him he doesn’t have to ask permission.
He points out that she responded negatively when he had tried for
a bit more “familiarity” when they parked his car by the lake one
night. Blanche explains that though Mitch’s attraction flatters
her, a single girl becomes “lost” if she doesn’t keep her urges
under control. She teases Mitch, suggesting that he is used to women
who are easy on their first date. Mitch tells Blanche that he likes
her because she is different from anyone he has ever met, an independent
spirit. Blanche laughs and invites him in for a nightcap.

Blanche lights a candle and prepares the drinks, saying
they must celebrate and forget their worries on their last night
together. She suggests that they pretend to be on a date at an artists’
café in Paris. She asks Mitch if he speaks French. After he tells
her he doesn’t, she teases him in the language he can’t understand,
asking, “Do you want to sleep together this evening? You don’t understand?
What a shame!” Blanche grows rapidly more amorous. Mitch won’t take his
coat off because he’s embarrassed about his perspiration, so she takes
it off for him. She tries to put Mitch at ease by admiring his imposing
physique. When he asks her what she weighs, she tells him to guess. He
picks her up, and the game leads to a brief and somewhat clumsy embrace.
Blanche stops him from putting any more moves on her, claiming she
has “old-fashioned ideals.” She sarcastically rolls her eyes as
she offers this remark, but Mitch cannot see her face.

After an uncomfortable silence, Mitch asks where Stanley
and Stella are, and he suggests that they all go out on a double
date some night. Blanche laughs at the idea, and asks how Mitch
and Stanley became friends. Mitch replies that they were military
buddies. Blanche asks what Stanley says about her, expressing her
conviction that Stanley hates her. Mitch thinks that Stanley simply
doesn’t understand her. Blanche argues that Stanley wants to ruin
her.

Mitch interrupts Blanche’s increasingly hysterical tirade
against Stanley to ask her how old she is. Caught off guard, she
responds by asking why he wants to know. He says that when he told
his ailing mother about Blanche, who would like to see Mitch settled
before she dies, he could not tell her how old Blanche was. Blanche
says that she understands how lonely Mitch will be when his mother
is gone. She fixes another drink for herself and gives a revealing account
of what happened with the tender young man she married. She was
only sixteen when they met, and she loved him terribly. Somehow,
though, her love didn’t seem to be enough to save him from his unhappiness—something
was tormenting him. Then one day she came home to find her young
husband in bed with an older man who had been his longtime friend.
In the hours after the incident, they all pretended nothing happened.
The three of them went out to a casino. On the dance floor, while
dancing a polka, the Varsouviana, she drunkenly confronted her young
husband and told him he “disgusted” her. The boy rushed out of the
casino, and everyone heard a shot. He had killed himself with a
bullet to the head.

Mitch comes to her and holds her, comforting her. He
tells her, “You need somebody. And I need somebody, too.” They kiss,
even as she sobs. Blanche says, “Sometimes—there’s God—so quickly!”

Analysis

Blanche’s encounter with Mitch exposes her sexual double
standard. In secret, she bluntly attempts to seduce the young man
collecting for the newspaper, an interaction that happens outside
the boundaries of acceptable or even reasonable behavior. Because
the incident is so far removed from Blanche’s professed moral standards,
she feels free to behave as she likes without fear. In contrast, since
the Kowalskis and their neighbors know of Blanche’s outings with
Mitch, she believes that they must take place within the bounds of
what she sees as social propriety.